ARTICLES ABOUT MICHAEL NUTTER BY DATE - PAGE 2

Ten days after inviting supporters to the start of his 2015 Philadelphia mayoral race, Tom Knox announced Friday that he had decided not to run after all. "Leading this great city as mayor has been a lifelong ambition, but it's simply not to be," he said in a statement distributed to reporters. "I put my family through one arduous mayoral campaign. I can't put them through another. " He said he decided after "much soul-searching and many difficult conversations with my wife, children and trusted advisers.

FLORENCE, BEIJING, Tianjin, London, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Birmingham, Grand Rapids, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C. No, that's not the list of stops on Miley Cyrus' Twerk Tour 2013. It's a list of places the mayor of Philadelphia has traveled to - in the past year. Since taking office in 2008, Mayor Nutter's travels outside Pennsylvania have cost Philly taxpayers $243,000, according to records obtained through a Right to Know request. Included in that total are expenses for Nutter's entourage, which usually includes a couple of top administration officials, an assistant and a handful of Philadelphia police officers for security.

LONDON - Bill Rumble and Mayor Nutter formed a tag team Monday, and a roomful of British business executives never had a chance. Rumble, chief commercial officer of Mark Group USA, softened up the crowd with his unqualified endorsement of Philadelphia as a place for a British company, such as his own, to set down roots in the United States. "We are really, really happy we located in Philadelphia," Rumble said, referring to his weatherization firm's decision to open its North American headquarters in the city.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, asked to take a pay cut and accept other concessions to help solve the school funding crisis, launched a series of ads Wednesday targeting Mayor Nutter. The campaign, which includes print, online, radio, and TV ads, links Nutter with Gov. Corbett, who has been criticized nationally for cutting education funding. "Over the past three years, Mayor Nutter has stood with Gov. Corbett as he gutted funding for Philadelphia public schools," a voice-over says in the 60-second radio spot.

IT WAS JANUARY 2009, and the stars seemed to have aligned over Philadelphia, signaling what should have been a Golden Age of government transparency in our erstwhile corrupt-and-contented city. Pennsylvania's new Right-to-Know Law - with its key clause that all government records are presumed to be public - had just gone into effect. No longer must citizens prove why records should be available to the public. Under the strengthened law, government agencies must prove why not . And Philly had elected as mayor a reform-minded councilman, Michael Nutter, who was wrapping up his first year in Room 215. Open government is his thing.

Throughout his 2007 campaign and five-plus years as mayor, Michael Nutter has promoted the virtues of government transparency and open records. At a U.S. Conference of Mayors event in Philadelphia last month, described as an "innovation summit," Nutter patted himself on the back for releasing 47 data sets covering everything from crime to property values. But in the last year, the administration has created new procedural and legal hurdles, with attendant delays, for people seeking access to city records.

In journalism, we have a saying: Three makes a trend. A few weeks ago, I ran into three different movers and shakers on our city streets. Each one first shared disillusionment over the usual suspects rumored to be running for mayor in 2015, and then expressed disgust with the current occupant of the office. One's face twisted in disdain as he spat out the words: "The guy is irrelevant, and has been since the morning after his reelection. " Another noted, "It took six years to build the Hoover Dam; six years in, this guy still can't figure out how to collect delinquent taxes.

"MITT Romney doesn't get it. " That's what Michael Nutter said at last year's Democratic National Convention. The mayor jabbed hard and fast at the Republican contender on the subject of education. Never mind that Philadelphia's schools have been in perpetual crisis for years. And here we are again, $304 million short. His plan? Try to keep the blame on Harrisburg. If they won't raise vice taxes, don't blame Nutter for the fact that our kids' schools, if they are still open, do not have foreign language or music or art or counselors or nurses or lunch-room aides or secretaries or security or disciplinarians or librarians or books or paper.

MICHAEL NUTTER will welcome technologists and mayors to a closed-door Innovation Summit this week. At Media Mobilizing Project, we work with poor and working people every day to tell our stories and connect our struggles using media and technology. Mayors, listen up: these are the innovations that our communities need. 1) Pay Your Workers Enough . Forty-two percent of city workers earn under $35,310 annually - below poverty for a family of four - and this number has doubled since 2008.